Making everyone happy is impossible. Pissing them off is a piece of cake. I like cake.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Quangos - the alphabet soup revealed

NB I am not the Devil.

Today sees the publication of a TaxPayers' Alliance report which I am sure will be of great interest to many of those who sup at the Kitchen - a full bestiary of the UK's quangos.

Importantly, the report uses a meaningul definition of the word quango, including any Semi Autonomous Public Body, that allows us to catalogue several hundred which the Cabinet Office currently refuse to recognise as being quangos at all.

In total, in 2007-08 there were 1,152 quangos operating in the UK, with £90 billion spent on or through them and employing over 534,000 quangocrats. Year on year, that means that whilst the total number has fallen by 10 bodies, the total spend has jumped by £13 billion.

The total figures are instructive as to the overall state of the vast unaccountable swathes of British Government, but in particular it acts as a tool for anyone to actually dig into it. If you want to have a look through the sheer scale of the quango state, you can read the full report here.

6 comments:

Don't close any down, for that would demand (massive) redundancy pay-offs.

Better to just do two things:

a) Remove any statutory powers either by just repealing the acts or returning them back to the Civil Service.

b) End funding

A number of QANGOs get other funding, so they would not die overnight, just have to deal with their implosion. Watch how those oh-so-caring top bods make sure they get out the elevator before it thuds into B1.